Lightweight Materials and Strain Mapping Seminar

Lightweight materials e.g. aluminium alloys and composites are now extensively used in transport applications.  Identifying the limiting conditions for damage tolerance of existing and new structures is needed in evaluating their performance. To examine these effects, a range of experiments have been conducted on specimens in different engineering applications employing 3D Digital Image Correlation (DIC).  For example, the blast response of composite and laminated glass constructions have been investigated as to their fragmentation and retention in the frame. 

The DIC techniques were developed for full scale blast testing of laminate windows etc.  The failure process of the joint seen in both blast testing and simulated blast loading is a combination of cohesive failure in the silicone and PVB/glass delamination.  Dynamic finite element modelling of these blast events is presented to provide guidelines for design against such damage. 

The 3D high-speed speckle strain mapping techniques for explosive blast research of building facade structures that his group have developed have now been adopted by the Home Office, Arup and others for their research of terrorist threats to buildings and vehicles. These DIC techniques have been applied to develop blast resilient composite structures for ONR.

These DIC experimental techniques are also applied to composite sandwich components employed in offshore wind turbine blades and other marine applications.  The redistribution of strain, from the onset of damage e.g. core shear fracture, and its subsequent development is in evidence by DIC and this has been modelled using FEA.

Researchers are Dr Paul Hooper, Dr Hari Arora, Paolo Del Linz and Shouhua Chen.